If John Jackson Miller can write a Wild West story set in the Star Wars universe (Kenobi), then I suppose I should give Brian Daley some slack for writing a treasure hunt story set in the same. It seems like an odd choice, though, especially considering this was only the fourth book that expanded on the movies. I get the feeling Miller was looking to do something that hadn’t been done in the Expanded Universe, but at the time Daley wrote this book, he could have done anything. Why this?

The story isn’t bad, but it is slow and somewhat emotionless. It has its moments (Bollux and Blue Max are the most realized characters here), but the romantic sub-sub-subplot between Han and Hasti is about as convincing as the one between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. I had my concerns that the book would be a two-star affair, but I have to admit, the race for the treasure is engaging enough, and how Daley concludes the race is clever, and works surprisingly well.

What’s weird about the book is I kept thinking I was reading an Indiana Jones book, not a Star Wars book. The race for the treasure, the discovery of the truth of the legend, and solving the riddles of finding the treasure itself would work well for another Indiana Jones story. (At the very least, it would be much better than Crystal Skull.) It also didn’t hurt that I kept envisioning the same person as the lead character.

Daley gets Han Solo, even if the overall story doesn’t quite fit him. The story fits into the EU in the sense that it ends with a loose end that will tie it in with the first movie, but Daley doesn’t go into much detail over it. I like Crispin’s trilogy better, since she fills in that detail, but the two trilogies together make for an intriguing backstory to science fiction’s favorite scoundrel.

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"